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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

I've been featuring a lot of cheese on the blog lately. This film is no exception - in fact, this film is an exemplary specimen of ripe, pungent, aromatic cheese, courtesy of Aaron Spelling. After flight 502 for London takes off from New York, a letter is discovered in the first class lounge warning of murders that will take place during the flight. Only the first class passengers are involved, and they include mystery writer Mona Briarly (Bergan), pop star Jack Marshall (Bono), international thief Paul Barons (Fernando Lamas), Jewish mother Ida Goldman (Molly Picon), bratty teenager Millard Kensington (Danny Bonaduce), Charlie Parkins (Walter Pidgeon) as well as a flight crew including Captain Larkin (Robert Stack) and stewardess Karen White (Fawcett). Who is responsible for the letter and who is or are the targets? As people start to die (in the "yanked from view into a closet" style of murder) we learn that the person who wrote the letter isn't joking. Red herrings abound, are dismissed and then the characters involved in them are relegated to the background. Also look for Brook Adams, Laraine Day, Ralph Bellamy and Hugh O'Brian in the cast.

Due to Farrah Fawcett's involvement in the film, it was released on DVD in the late 90's. Most of the reviews I've read seem to have missed the campier aspects of the film, but it's worth seeing for just those aspects. In addition to DVD, it can be seen in full above, thanks to a YouTube upload by smpr12.

I don't know this film -- although I will watch it soon -- but Sonny Bono? I know he was in one of the two "Airplane" comedies, but I didn't realize it was a double joke in that he was making fun of something he'd been in.

Wow - hilarious on a dozen different levels. Straight-arrow Stack unknowingly prefacing his "Airplane!" role...many priceless lines here. .. Inviting the teen Bonaduce, with a wink, into the "cockpit" to show him "how the plane flies itself". Errrrrr. (Stack's wife and daughter have smaller roles.) I actually saw this upon its initial airing in 1975 - I remember the smoking package, but couldn't place it until now.

I would, indeed, risk a murder, to fly in such splendor these days. I just experienced air travel two days ago, and I might as well have been in an airborne Cracker Barrel.

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About Me

Every year there are tens of thousands of productions completed and released commercially. This has been going on for over 100 years. Each year there are a handful of them that become touchstones, remembered classics lovingly handed down from generation to generation. These aren't those productions. Featured here on this blog are the forgotten step children of the entertainment industry, films and television shows that started out with the best of intentions, and though no fault of their own (well... sometimes) they've been forgotten and left to languish on the dusty shelves of history. I hope you enjoy the films and television I dig up!
When I'm not digging through the dustbin of lost content I'm one of America's most unique lifestyle gurus - Brini Maxwell.